Taking a page out of Danny Williams’ book, veterans launched an ‘anyone but Conservative’ campaign yesterday in New Brunswick. Much like the postal workers have vowed to do, former soldiers plan to regularly picket campaign events, as well as post lawn signs and talk up their efforts on social media. The group kicked things off with a protest outside the Legion in Fredericton as Conservative leader Stephen Harper stood at a podium inside and painted himself as “the military’s main defender on the national scene”, promising, if re-elected, to boost the number of military reservists by 6,000 soldiers.

If that number sounds familiar it’s because it’s the same one Harper promised back in 2008 when the country’s last defence strategy was unveiled. It was all a bit rich for retired lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie, who’s running for the Liberal in Ottawa-Orleans and helped craft the 2008 policy. “How dare he?” Leslie said. “Since the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, Mr. Harper has decimated the reserves.” CP’s Kristy Kirkup has more.

One of the NDP’s star candidates is former NDP Saskatchewan finance minister Andrew Thomson. He’s running in Eglinton-Lawrence, hoping to defeat Finance Minister Joe Oliver and is admittedly suspicious of the government’s claims of having balanced the budget. “I do worry about what kind of a mess this government is leaving financially, and what that is going to mean for future programs and for the state of the deficit,” he said.

Nearby in York Centre, Conservative candidate Mark Adler refused to apologize for dragging the Holocaust into the election campaign and plastering it on his signs. Some say he’s exploiting an atrocity to win votes. As our Janice Dickson reports, he begs to differ.

In Quebec, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe took aim at TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline plan and said the province shouldn’t be a highway for Albertan oil. Nor should it be up to the National Energy Board to decide what’s transported through the province.

As the campaign carries on, there’s no doubt going to be a question or two about this: new data quietly posted on the Treasury Board’s website shows that spending on bonuses and performance pay for the public service executives who implement the government’s orders has jumped by more than 65 per cent since Stephen Harper came to power. Our Elizabeth Thompson dove into the numbers and has the story.

In the wake of all the dancing that’s gone on around whether or not Canada is in a recession, a new Bloomberg report says Canada’s “very watered-down recession” will be mild, as will the recovery.

As the military prepares to do full-on battle with sexual misconduct, the CP’s Murray Brewster says to appreciate the uphill battle Gen. Jonathan Vance is facing, one only has to look back to 1999, as “everything old is new again.”

Here and there:

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe campaigns in Montreal, with plans to trot out the party’s candidates in the Laurentides region north of the city in Saint-Jerome.The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police continues its annual meeting in Quebec City.

The Fraser Institute and a network of international think-tanks release the Human Freedom Index, a global measurement of personal, civil, and economic freedoms. The report compares the level of human freedom in 152 countries using 76 indicators in areas that include freedom of speech, religion, individual economic choice, and women’s freedoms.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair is campaigning in British Columbia, with stops in Nanaimo, Parksville and Courtenay.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May holds a press conference in Vancouver to unveil details of a comprehensive plan to defend Canada’s coastal communities from risky pipeline and tanker schemes.

In eastern Ukraine, civilians are said to be among the ten people reportedly killed in a flare-up in violence between government forces and pro-Russian rebels near Mariupol.

In Featured Opinion this morning:

Susan Delacourt brings her years of experience covering federal politics to bear on the scenario no one wants to talk about: a hung Parliament. What if the Harper Conservatives win a narrow minority but can’t get a budget bill or a throne speech passed? How does a man whose political instincts run to ultimatums handle an environment where survival depends on the ability to make deals?

The prime minister may be short of friends in the Commons but at least he knows where his friends are elsewhere — and what he has to do to keep them friendly. Take gun control. Tasha Kheiriddin points out tonight that the Harper government is postponing a planned gun-tracing regulation — a public safety measure — for the seventh time in a row. As always, the gun lobby is calling the shots.

And that’s what it’s all about in Election 2015 — the narrow differences that will decide whether marginal ridings across the country end up in the Conservatives’ column or somewhere else. The Tyee‘s Will McMartin argues that the New Democrats in particular have to recognize that, notwithstanding what the national polls say, the Conservatives have more ‘safe’ seats in play.